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" I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a Marine or something like that. "

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" Leaders today are isolated by phalanxes of body guards. It's profoundly undemocratic, the way they have used terrorism as a means to protect themselves. "

Robert Harris

Body

Way

Today

" The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels. "

" We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that. "

" Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree. "

Robert Harris

Everyone

Agree

" My parents were interested in history and the world. My father read Graham Greene and Georges Simenon and was a strong trade unionist and Labour supporter. "

" Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism. "

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

" You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature. "

" Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind. "

" I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety. "

" I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "

" If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business. "

Robert Harris

Great

Rich

" The financial world is at the cutting edge of high technology. "

" For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold? "

Robert Harris

You

People

" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "

" You find out what you think by talking to yourself. "

" Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. "

" One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present. "

" Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then. "

" Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. "

" Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated. "

Robert Harris

Politics

Complicated

" My greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like. "

" Within reason, I can write what I like and spend as long doing it as is necessary. That is a luxury beyond price. "

" Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road. "

" Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there. "

" I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy. "

" One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary. "

" It's when you've stopped writing and are doing other things, especially when you're asleep, that the real work is done. "

" I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies. "

" You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties. "